They Used to Be My Heroes
by Agent Malkere
Summary: Oneshot about Chazz and his brothers and a brief look into Chazz's past. [No pairings] First in the Dark Rebellion Collection.


**_They Used to Be My Heroes _**

_By Agent Malkere_

**Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh GX, I just barrow the characters occasionally to act out the strange ideas that come from between my ears and then give them back without making any money in the process. **

A/N: This is told from Chazz's POV.

_They used to be my heroes. My role models. My ideals. The unspoken standard I set every new person I met against. To my eyes, they were perfect, flawless. They could never do anything wrong. I wanted to be just like them. I wanted to be a hero, too, just like my brothers. _

_Everyone said that Jagger was a genius. He had a brain like a graphing calculator and could do calculus problems in his head. My mother used to tell people that the first word her middle son ever said was 'physics' and the second was 'quantum.' I think she was joking but I'm not sure. Jagger graduated at the top of his class by a good five percent and took honors courses in every subject and still never brought home a grade that was less than an A. He used to help me with my homework. I remember once, he spent two hours defining words from my reading assignment that I couldn't understand. _

_Of the two of them, it was always Slade who I looked up to the most. He was the one who accidentally introduced me to Duel Monsters with the Battle City Tournament. He could talk circles around anybody, even genius Jagger, in those days. He was the most popular guy in his school and practically had his own fan club following him around all the time in the halls between classes and at sports games. There wasn't a sport Slade couldn't master, whether it was Soccer, Lacrosse, Football, Basketball, Baseball, Swimming, Tack and Field, Cross Country, Volleyball, Tennis, Squash, Racquetball, or Ping-Pong – it would only be a short matter of time before he was the best. _

_And then there was me – average to the last in comparison. I was never particularly successful in academics, except in writing, and mathematics were for the most part beyond my grasp. Skinny as a rake and with all the flexibility of a wooden board sports were completely out of the question. My performance in gym class was not helped any when it was discovered that I had asthma and even though the doctor informed my parents that I would grow out of it as I got older, it was just another sign to me that my body was weak and would never be able to compete in the competitions that I had dreamed of before. But there was one thing going for me, I was Slade and Jagger's younger brother and everyone knew Slade and Jagger. Everyone liked Slade and Jagger. _

_And they were my heroes._

_I say all of this in the past tense. They aren't my heroes any more. _

_They changed, after our parents died. I didn't notice at first – I was too busy trying to be tough and hide my tears over our parents like my brothers did and not let on to how much I was hurting inside. Slade and Jagger had already launched themselves into the world of business by then. I was only eight and so naïve. I was actually excited that I'd be living with my brothers again; I had missed them ever since they'd left two years earlier. _

_At first, things were just like they used to be, before they left – just without our parents around any more. They joked; they played tricks on me; Jagger helped me occasionally with my homework; Slade encouraged my growing passion for Duel Monsters, but something felt wrong. I never said anything, though, because they were my heroes and I worshiped the ground they walked on. It never occurred to me that these weren't my brothers anymore, that they'd changed, that the world had corrupted the two people that I had believed could walk on water. _

_The signs were subtle at first. Too subtle for my eight year old mind to pick up on. Money became more important to them than anything else and the business always came before the meager family we had left. They slowly became more distant, caring less and less about me as their little brother and more and more about the impression I made and that I was the best at everything that I did. Soon, they stopped even noticing me unless I did something spectacular so I pushed myself harder and harder so that they would notice me, just even acknowledge me. I would spend hours lying awake in bed staring at the ceiling trying to figure out what I had done wrong to make my brothers forget about me. I was convinced that it was because I wasn't good enough to be worthy of them. It sounds so pathetic now, looking back. I never occurred to me that they just didn't care anymore, because they were my heroes and heroes don't do that._

_I took my pain and loneliness out on my work. Every second of every day I worked my fingers to the bone in my desperate search for the attention I needed. It wasn't as though I had any friends I could talk to. I've never had very good social skills and the few friends I had had I had lost when I'd switched schools after our parents died so that I could be more conveniently close to were Slade and Jagger were working. I told myself that I didn't need friends; all I needed were my brothers. And I made myself believe that; repeated that to myself over and over again as I lay awake in the middle of the night crying for my parents – asking them to please come back from where ever they had gone – pressing my face into a pillow so that Slade and Jagger couldn't wake up and hear me. And then, only sixth months after our parents died, my heroes died as well, and the innocent part of me died with them. _

_Slade and Jagger didn't literally die, but in my eyes they did. _

_My childhood ended when the abuse began. _

_They'd never hurt me before then, not once, even in their playful roughhousing. I was caught completely unawares. I'd known they'd be upset. Lately, they had been talking a lot about being 'worthy' of the Princeton name and living up to my name all of which I had taken to heart. So I knew they would react badly when they found out from my teacher that, despite my best efforts, I was failing math. It just never occurred to me how badly. _

_I guess things had gone poorly at the office that day because Slade and Jagger both came home in a foul mood. We were just about to sit down to supper when the phone rang and my heart dropped into my stomach as Jagger answered it, talked grimly in hushed tones for a few minutes, then hung up. He beckoned Slade over, a strange look on his face, and my brothers went into another room to talk. I waited, too nervous to touch the food in front of me until they came back and when I saw the expression on Slade's face, I wanted to curl up and die._

_Slade grabbed me by the collar of my school uniform and hoisted me into the air. I kicked and struggled, choking as the fabric of my shirt began to cut off the oxygen flow to my lungs, feet dangling in the air above the ground. _

"_That was your teacher Jagger was just talking to," he snarled only inches from my face. "Apparently, you've been slacking off, haven't been putting in the full effort! You're failing math class!" I made a strangled gasping sound in an attempt to defend myself but I could barely breathe, let alone talk. Slade ignored this. "What did you think you were doing, huh? What did you think you were doing!" He shook me hard, still giving me no chance to speak. I felt my chest begin to tighten in the beginnings of another asthma attack. Slade didn't notice anything, didn't realized that I was beginning to suffocate, he just shook me harder then dragged me to my room and threw me in after yelling at me, "You stupid, no good slacker!!!"_

_I heard the lock click on the other side of the door as I clutched my throat desperately searching one handed for my inhaler. I truly thought that I was going to die by the time I found it and was finally able to breathe the medicine into my lungs and feel the tightness lessen. If it had been any worse, it probably would have killed me. _

_They were never my heroes again after that. They turned into monsters and I took to wearing long sleeves and high collars at all times to hide the evidence of all of my failures during my time at Duel Monsters Prep School. Every time I lost a duel or did poorly on an exam, I got hit with whatever was nearest at hand, repeatedly. _

_My life became a nightmare. No one would have believed me I'd told them. Probably not even if I showed them the scars. And slowly as the nightmare intensified, I became a monster too, distorted by my brothers and the pain that came with failure and sometimes just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, until I have morphed from the naïve, hero worshipping child I had been into the wretch, loathsome creature I had become by the time I reached Duel Academy, seven years later. _

_I didn't even like me anymore. I was becoming what I had dreamt of as a child – just like my brothers, but that wasn't what I wanted anymore. All I wanted was to get away from them with their creepy laughs and their freakish plans for world domination. _

_The only problem with Duel Academy was that it was all about dueling and Duel Monsters which should have been great, but every time I dueled someone, it brought out all of the traits in me that I hate and every time lost I ended up hiding in my dorm room for hours, some irrational part of my mind fearing that Slade and Jagger would show up at any second to beat the pulp out of me. Not that I told anyone any of this; it had been ingrained into me by that point that you don't talk to other people about personal problems. _

_My life hit rock bottom that first year at DA. I lost my place as the best freshman duelist, lost whatever respect I had once commanded, was stripped of my dignity, my pride, and I ran. Ran away as far as I could, which ended up being North Academy. And I changed. I began to fight back._

_I'm not exactly like them any more. They are my brothers, though, so no matter what I do there will always some similarities between us, but I'm my own person now… with my own version of a family. Okay, so my new family consists of a hand full of certain fellow students who are also currently residing in Slifer Red and a deck (or room depending on the time of day) full of dysfunctional Duel Spirits, three of which live in my proper deck and therefore follow me everywhere making annoying comments on everything I do, but they're better than the family I had before. Don't tell any of them I think that though, otherwise I'll never hear the end of it! _

_I can stand on my own now. I don't need those dead heroes to look up to any more. _

A/N: Wow. That was a weird oneshot. I'd appreciate hearing what people think so please review! I realize that just by writing this (not to mention the general tone) it is OOC for Chazz! Sorry, I just needed to write this – don't ask me why. The idea has been bothering me for ages…


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